Changing Junior Officer and Noncommissioned Officer Skills

by Major Daniel Bard As we continue to train and fight in an era of persistent conflict, the list of required skills and attributes expected of our junior officers and noncommissioned officers (NCO) constantly shift. Not only are platoon- and company-level leaders expected to be technically and tactically proficient in their basic branch, but they are expected to be advisors, ambassadors, civil-military integrators, and negotiators. These new required skills have created a “learning creep,” which is apparent Armywide, even at the field-grade level. Many tactical units are increasingly dipping into operational design due to the demands of the operational environment. Battalion and brigade combat team planners are required to develop campaign plans and lines of effort instead of focusing on courses of action and the military decisionmaking process. Much of the learning required to conduct this higher level of operations is acquired through experience and trial and error. While our military education system attempts to keep pace with current trends and needs, we often struggle to stay ahead of the curve. The Army spends a lot of money and time on a professional education system for our junior leaders, but are we teaching the right things and are we teaching them correctly? Any discussion of modifying the officer or NCO education system inevitably involves considerations of training time, assets available, funding, and troop strength. Having been assigned to the U. S. Army Training and Doctrine Command for the past several years, I am intimately aware of the manning challenges and the need to limit the trainees, transients, holdees, and students (TTHS) account, so I do not intend to delve into an in-depth, statistical analysis of training time, course length, and number of student/instructor contact hours.1 These areas are constantly reviewed by school staffs and commandants, as well as training developers. Instead, this article briefly discusses training versus education and the challenges we face as we forge future leaders. While there are various definitions and mental images of what constitutes training versus education, common definitions highlight that education focuses on the development of the mind and intellect while training focuses on learning skills. As a task-based force, our strength lies in training versus education. We know how to develop skills in ourselves and in others; we understand the live, virtual, and constructive capabilities, and we understand leader, individual, and collective training. However, the contemporary operating environment demands that we become educated on cultures, lines of effort, economics, governance, and countless other variables. The real challenge lies in our ability to prepare soldiers for this environment and how to make our training educational. The Army’s professional education system generally operates around the principle of a student-centered, small-group, adult-learning model. This model requires soldiers in training to learn through the study of doctrine and other course material, which is followed by discussion and exercises facilitated by a qualified instructor. This differs greatly from an instructor-centered method where students receive lectures and professors offer examples based on personal experience. While there are many benefits to the student-centered technique, the challenge grows as the student’s familiarity with the subject becomes increasingly distant. For example, it is much easier for a group of junior captains to learn company-level tactics through the student-centered technique than it is for them to learn the intricacies of the military decisionmaking process. The challenge usually lies simply with knowing “what right looks like.” If you have no experience as a staff member, it is difficult to learn how to correctly conduct staff operations, which is why there are many proponents of experiential learning techniques during which students experience hard lessons virtually so they can build mental models to confront real experiences later. — 13

There are many subjects that officers and NCOs must be familiar with that are not taught in Army schools. Unfortunately, we have no way of identifying those subjects until we happen to stumble onto them. For example, as a reconnaissance troop commander in Iraq, one of my scout platoon leaders, out of necessity, became well versed in building roads and identifying damaged electrical transformers, skills which were not covered during training or educational events. While we will undoubtedly continue to encounter challenges for which we are not trained, we will simultaneously attempt to develop leaders capable of dealing with uncertainty and what U. S. Army Field Manual (FM) 5-0, Army Planning and Orders Production, refers to as “ill-structured problems.”2 These types of problems are not easily defined due to a lack of information or misunderstanding of the situation; they are normally complex with no simple solution and are probably the types of situations that will become more and more frequent in the future. To help add structure to these ill-structured problems, the Army developed a problem-solving methodology, known as the “military decisionmaking process (MDMP).” Added to this process is an emerging idea known as “design.” There is afield manual interim (FMI) currently being staffed, which explains the concept of design, and based on discussions from the Combined Arms Center Blog, this concept will be worked into the next revision of FM 5-0.3 Design will not replace the MDMP; however, it will assist leaders and staff officers with certain aspects of battle command, mostly the understand, visualize, and describe portions. Battle command in the contemporary operational environment — primarily counterinsurgency and stability operations — is challenging. However, the bigger challenge is to educate the force on the concept of design and how it fits into our doctrine. This is an example of the challenges we face when our educational system relies heavily on training. It is easy to train a task using the crawl, walk, and run methodology. In most of our courses, that methodology equates to a day-one doctrinal discussion or slideshow, a day-two practical exercise, and a day-three graded event. We train everything from close quarters combat to MDMP in this fashion. Life (and education) gets much more complex when we attempt to train soldiers to be agile. The question, “what is an adaptive leader or an agile soldier,” has been extensively discussed. More important questions, however, are “how do we train our leaders and soldiers to be adaptive and agile; how do we train for uncertainty; and how do we educate our leaders to overcome uncertainty?” The Army has historically waivered back and forth on the merits of a civilian education to the abilities of the leader. Currently, it seems many senior officers are in favor of our junior leaders obtaining civilian educations to broaden their skills. Officer candidates are encouraged to major in liberal arts and languages instead of traditional hard sciences and engineering. However, these educational opportunities will not reach the entire force. In an effort to reach the force with new ideas, not only must the Army add topics to current course programs of instruction, but also address how to appropriately teach these new topics. For instance, cultural appreciation and language training have been added to our career courses — do we have qualified experts to teach those subjects effectively; or are we attempting to train skills or develop part of our intellect? If we are educating, we need professors, not facilitators. Balancing education with training in a resource-constrained environment with a current critical need and a future forecast of a different requirement is extremely difficult. Right now, the Army needs soldiers who can effectively operate in the current fight and win. However, we cannot lose sight of our long-term mission of defending our Nation against all enemies, foreign and domestic. We must maintain our preparedness for the future fight and that requires education. The Army’s professional development model is based on learning from operational assignments, professional courses, and self-study. Currently, the first two portions of that model focus on training military occupational specialty (MOS) skills for the current fight, while the third portion is unguided. Without dramatically reshaping the Army personnel and manning policies, education can only be increased through a revision of generating force schools and a guided self-study program. As our operating concepts become more complex, we must work even harder to properly resource our educational opportunities. Some concepts, such as design, cannot and should not be watered down or we risk losing the point of the concept all together — especially if it becomes part of the Army’s capstone doctrine, at which time, we must be prepared to teach it; otherwise, we risk misinterpretation. These current and future challenges demand a greater emphasis on increasing the intellectual proficiency of our schools. We have seen our leaders and soldiers develop out-of-the-box solutions to complex problems — we must provide them with the best education possible to rise to the ever-evolving challenges of the future. Notes 1Limiting the TTHS account is critical to the operational force due to the zero-sum nature of the U. S. Army’send strength. The longer a student is held in a professional school, the longer an operational unit is absent a soldier for its mission. 2Headquarters, Department of the Army, U. S. Army Field Manual 5-0 (FM 101-5), Army Planning and Orders Production, U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., January 2005. 3Combined Arms Center Blog is available at http://usacac. army.mil/blog/. Major Daniel Bard is the assistant S3, 1st Special Troops Battalion, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Fort Bliss, TX. He received a B. S. from the U. S. Military Academy. His military education includes Armor Officer Basic Course, Armor Captain Career Course, and Intermediate Level Education (ILE) Self-Study, U. S. Army Command and General Staff College. He has served in various command and staff positions, to include chief, initiatives group, Headquarters, U. S. Army Armor Center, Fort Knox, KY; small group instructor, Armor Captain Career Course, Fort Knox; troop commander, 1st Squadron, 14th Cavalry, 3d Brigade, 2d (3/2) Stryker Brigade Combat Team (SBCT), Fort Lewis, WA; and assistant S3, 3/2 SBCT, Fort Lewis. “…the contemporary operating environment demands that we become educated on cultures, lines of effort, economics, governance, and countless other variables. The real challenge lies in our ability to prepare soldiers for this environment and how to make our training educational.” 14 —